1949

For the past two years I have been favored with a dependable flow of news clips out of Dallas, Tex. Notes under the Centex Corporation logo keep me informed on the progress of our captains of industry, with an occasional nod to a lieutenant on the way up. My correspondent is none other than Paul Woodbury, who, like many of you, is so anxious to complete his set of "Class of 1949" glasses that he is now bartering news clips for glasses or an old Indian tie. There is only one way to get those glasses, Paul, and that is to keep up the care and feeding of Head Agent Punchy Thomas. You will be hearing from him shortly.

Among Paul's latest contributions is the announcement that Dick Hanselman has added the chief executive post to his president's position at Genesco Inc., a marketer and maker of footwear and men's apparel.

Also from Paul in December was a report of Tom Towler's elevation to chairman of the board of Top Value Enterprises, where he will continue to serve as chief executive officer. Top Value is a subsidiary of Baldwin United, a financial conglomerate, and has a 26-year history as a trading stamp, incentive, and travel company with offices in 29 states. Tom has been active in the Dayton, Ohio, community, serving on the United Fund, the Dayton Philharmonic board of trustees, the Victory Theater, Children's Medical Center, Citizens Federal Savings and Loan, and the Art Institute. He and his wife Sue life in Ketterling, Ohio.

Al Wagner found Paul Barnico behind a large moustache while attending a recent North Shore Dartmouth Club meeting. Paul is still with General Electric, where he started in the small aircraft engine division in 1951 and is now involved in market analysis. His wife Kay teaches in the Beverly school system and son Tom, Dartmouth '77, got a law degree from Boston College and is presently working in the office of the Massachusetts attorney general. Paul has been responsible for keeping Dartmouth supplied with Beverly, Mass., undergraduates for the past ten years while serving as a club interviewer.

As Dartmouth alumni, I think we can all take pride in the fact that one new and one relatively new member of the U.S. Senate are products of a Dartmouth undergraduate education. Paul E. Tsongas '62 and Thomas Slade Gorton III, operating from different sides of the aisle, are each exhibiting a refreshing independence from old-style party politics. The Boston Globe did an extensive feature story on Slade in December, and at the risk of displaying some '49er parochialism I offer the following excerpts:

"If you know Gorton's fish sticks, it was Slade's great-grandfather of the same name who was originally behind them, having started Gorton's of Gloucester in Massachusetts around 1840. The bank took the business over in the mid-twenties and General Mills acquired it sometime in the fifties. Slade's father moved from Boston to Chicago and with $1,200 started his own wholesale fish business six weeks before the stock market crash of 1929. He called it Slade Gorton and Company, it prospered, and now operates out of both Chicago and Boston.

"Slade grew up in Evanston, Ill., and following Dartmouth obtained his law degree from Columbia University. He took off for the West Coast at about this time, having picked Seattle out of an atlas and an almanac as a place to settle down. It provided good law firms, where there were not 'a hundred lawyers or any of that stuff and an open society in which to pursue a career in public life.

"Public life it was, serving in the Washington state legislature from 1959 to 1969 and as House majority leader from 1967 to 1969. In 1969 Slade was elected attorney general, a post he held until his successful challenge to Warren Magnuson for his U.S. Senate seat in 1980."

Slade told the Globe reporter that he does not wish to be identified with many of his new-right Senate classmates, or their leader, the President, whom he challenged last year during the debate over the controversial $8.5-billion sale of AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia before voting in favor of the sale.

As a member of the Budget Committee, he was an early supporter of the administration's spending cuts proposals but now finds himself put off by, among other things, its unwillingness to deal with reductions in spending for defense and unwillingness to deal with the fact that we!! need more revenues.

Slade and Sally live in a house located two and a half blocks from the Capitol. Their three children - Tod, Sarah Jane, and Rebecca Lynn - attend college back home. He enjoys the entree that being a U.S. Senator provides, but misses the climate of Washington state and its informality. He also feels safer there."

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